


Anchor

by MarigoldVance



Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Blood Orgies, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Prompt Fill, Soulmarks, Soulmates, WinterFRE2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22296217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarigoldVance/pseuds/MarigoldVance
Summary: It's impossible, Mitchell thinks becauseVampires can't receive Soulmarks. And yet, here he is, staring in shock at his palm where a name has appeared and doesn't seem to want to rub away.
Relationships: Anders Johnson/John Mitchell
Comments: 15
Kudos: 39
Collections: GatheringFiKi - Winter FRE 2020





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: " _156\. Soulmates AU (anything sort of soulmates)_ "

John Mitchell stared in shock, his eyes the size of his sire’s Royal Doultan dinner plates displayed in the cabinets behind him. He jackknifed up, his human playthings unceremoniously dropped to the pillowed ground as he continued to gape in disbelief. They complained, their blood-sticky hands trying to force him back down by the shoulders, but he wouldn’t budge.

He shook them off without effort and stood, picking his way over the snakes and wolves who fucked across every inch of the salon floor. Mitchell couldn’t hear the whimpers, moans, sounds of pleasure-pain, that washed against him, hands brushing his ankles and calves in summons as he removed himself from the room. It was as if a fishbowl had been placed over his head, muffling the noise so that the rush of disbelief in his ears was loudest.

Blood orgies were more fun when you weren’t suddenly slapped with divine intervention.

Once he closed the doors, sealed in the the sounds and scents of carnal desire, Mitchell moved to his left; down the empty, dimly lit hallway and toward the room his sire had loaned him for the week. He was dazed, hand still held out in front of him. He managed to trip only twice over his own feet before he made it into the cool air of the mostly unused bedroom.

“How, in the name of – ” He stopped himself before he burned his tongue on blasphemy.

Mitchell shut the door, locking it with a quiet _click_ , and buckled to the floor, the solid wood at his back a reminder that he was still in the world and this was, indeed, happening. To him. Now. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his lids with rough, tacky red fingers, and inhaled for the sake of comfort. When he opened them again, he held his right hand in front of his face once more and almost lost himself in a fit of hysterical laughter.

It was impossible. 

There, along the outside of his palm, from wrist to below the knot of his thumb, _was a name_. It looked scrawled in an ink of such deep red it appeared almost black, etched beneath the skin; a supernatural tattoo that claimed his heart-soul- _being_ after almost one-hundred years of aloneness.

Vampires didn’t get Anchors. They were robbed of the gift when they were robbed of their humanity, twisted and reborn as animals in people-skin.

Mitchell knew the basic lore: Everyone had an Anchor – that other half of themselves who tethered them to the world and made them better. Made them feel more intensely, shine more brightly, live more fully. Some were born together and would drift toward each other with every decision made. Others were born completely out of sync, perhaps only to meet in another lifetime. All were given a clue in their skin. A word or pattern or identical birthmark. A name …

And then there were those, like Mitchell, who were doomed never to experience the rumored bliss of an Anchor. Born and lived without any indication of their destiny; whose threads were cut prematurely when they were dragged from the world they knew and into another, murkier one.

So … how the hell did Mitchell, cock-deep in a faceless body and bloated on a cocktail of human juices, find himself with a _soulmark_ when he didn’t have a _soul_? 

Truly, unarguably, frighteningly _impossible_.

Sat naked on the floor, splattered in blood like a Jackson Pollock, Mitchell felt things his carcass of a body hadn’t experienced since George’s ass still warmed the throne, serving to make him increasingly uneasy: A rabbit pulse, blurred vision, dry mouth.

Fuck, he was going to faint, the depiction of some falling-out woman who characterized his time. And wouldn’t that be spectacular material for his sire to use to mock him into a second grave.

He’d try breathing exercises if they weren’t so useless.

Examining the name, a swirl of letters beneath a smudge of blood, Mitchell heaved a sigh and decided to do something with himself. Something productive. Something that he would inevitably regret because everything in him was cackling at the cosmic joke that was quickly becoming his life – or whatever he thought to call it. He hauled himself off the floor and stalked toward the bed, pulling out the duffel he’d brought with him.

He shoved the few clothes he’d packed back in, careless of wrinkles. If this was happening – if this was _real_ – he wanted answers. And those answers, he told himself, would be with whoever belonged to the name now emblazoned across his palm.

As soon as he was done with his task, he flopped down, sinking into the cushy duvet with his arms spread wide in surrender. Slowly, Mitchell turned his head toward the offending mark as if to make sure he wasn’t blood-drunk and imagining it. Which could’ve been the case; he’d conjured worse with his mind after a particularly brutal feeding-spree.

Without permission, his hand came to hover in front of his face again, beckoning him to _come find me_. Entranced, he lifted his head from where it lay, lips and tongue working together in a depraved display to suck away the smear that obscured his mark. He groaned as if his mouth were debauching the skin of whoever was at the other end of this adventitious twist of fate.

Tingles traveled from jaw to groin and outward through his limbs, the unmistakable scent of arousal wafting from his pores as he slowly eased his other hand down the length of his body. An image flashed behind closed eyelids, the surprise merely adding to the thick swelling of lust that wracked through Mitchell: A glance of startling blue eyes and the smell of citrus pulled Mitchell further under the spell he was thoughtlessly succumbing to.

_I’m here_ , a voice Mitchell had never heard whispered in echoes in his mind. _I’m waiting_.

Struck by the nearness of the voice, Mitchell forced himself out from whatever fog he’d drifted into, the wayward hand that’d found his half-hard cock removed like whiplash as Mitchell came to his senses.

Palm thoroughly clean, Mitchell thumped his head back on the duvet, blissed out and thirsty, lips oversensitized from his semi-pornographic solo performance. 

He traced the script with eyes and gentle fingertips, memorizing the shape and heaviness of it. Mitchell refused to say the name aloud; it was too intimate. He didn’t want to corrupt it, curl it around the length of a tongue that couldn’t taste how rich and full of possibility it was. Still, a small piece of him warmed; whoever they were, Mitchell accepted that he _wanted_ to find them.

He would be damned (further) if he didn’t give it a go. He wobbled his way to the adjoining bathroom to rinse himself of the evidence of the solstice feast he’d been enjoying before this _no-longer-a-fiasco_. Afterward, he shimmied into his second-skin jeans, laced up his boots and slung his bag over his shoulder.

Hopefully, if he was lucky, he’d make it out the door and to the gates without interruption. Mitchell couldn’t imagine having to explain what the hell was going on, not to his sire, not to anyone. The more he mulled it over, he decided that he didn’t want them to know; that they didn’t _deserve_ to know.

The crisp night air hit him like contrition, clinging to the wetness in his messy hair. Mitchell prowled across the expansive lawn and away from the mansion, hopping over a line of low-trimmed hedges and away. No one was about, all too preoccupied with indulging their cravings. 

If he were smarter, Mitchell supposed, he could’ve taken advantage of his sire’s intoxication and used his sire’s resources, of which his sire had many. Money, plane tickets to everywhere, lodgings across the globe, no questions asked. But Mitchell didn’t want to risk it. Harrick was excellent at acting one way while being another and it wouldn’t surprise Mitchell if Harrick was, in fact, not at all lost in the haze of the solstice. Mitchell didn’t want the threat of Harrick’s death-hungry whims anywhere near his might-be Anchor.

The longer the name rested within him, the more Mitchell felt inclined to protect what he didn’t yet have.

“I’ll find you,” He promised in a whisper, far enough away from Harrick’s property to let his guard down. He sat alone in the bus station, rubbing the name with his opposite thumb through the thick wool of his gloves. “Wherever you are …”

 _Anders_.

**Author's Note:**

> this now has a companion piece (in Anders' POV): [Vacant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27876230/chapters/68626602#workskin)


End file.
